I was so excited last week as I was able to do something I hadn’t done in such a long time! Go to the hairdresser! Now this may not seem such a big deal to you but it’s something that I love. I’ve known my hairdresser for nearly 20 years and have watched her as her career has blossomed and her business grown.
However, this experience was a little different than before, embracing all of the safety standards, the salon had been refurbished, deep cleaned, my temperature was checked, I wore a mask as did the staff, surfaces were cleaned and recleaned, the salon was at less than 50% capacity to provide social distances, they had gone to tremendous lengths to keep me and their other clients safe.
As I sat there with tin foil in my hair, I fell into a lovely feeling and simply filled with compassion for them. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how hard these last few months had been for them. To watch your life’s work teeter on the edge for so long unsure of its survival along with so many small businesses, then be elated to be open, but having to invest in so much change, and be so restricted in numbers. The future must seem so uncertain. As I watched my friend as she busily ran her salon, professional, as always and filled with so much grace, my heart went out to her.
I was however, disheartened to hear how some have not been so understanding, that they have had clients who’d become aggressive about the requirements being asked of them, some had strongly disagreed and refused to comply, some expecting it to be exactly as it was before were simply shocked.
In my mind this was such a beautiful example of how we all create our experience with the thoughts that we have in the moment we are in, innocently believing that our feelings are being caused by the situation we’re faced with, not noticing that on any other day we may feel or react differently to the same situation.
It was so curious to me that I had fallen into a space of understanding, and was then using my thoughts for a different purpose, my imagination, to create what I had considered to be a ‘how it must have been for them’ scenario helping me to understand even more.
As Syd Banks, the wise teacher I often refer my clients to, once said ‘thought is a divine tool, nothing more, nothing less, only a tool. A wise person, like a good tradesman, uses this tool to the best of his or her ability.
So often we forget that it is thought that creates whatever it is that we are experiencing, but there I was, in the same hairdresser, with those around me all having different experiences, having different feelings and emotions, all caused by the thinking they were having in that moment. Whilst all the time, the salon and the staff in it hadn’t changed.
I have found this one insight so helpful over the years, whilst like any human being, at times I forget that I am the creator of how I am feeling, and I fall into a place of believing the cause of that feeling is something other than me, and I start to react. However, so often I will get a little internal nudge, that interrupts my train of reactive thought, (a little like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio) creating space for a little more understanding to occur. Noticing that this is part of our system too, rather than ignoring it, has been so useful to me, a beautiful natural righting mechanism steering us back to a more balanced place, a place where we can experience the situation with more clarity, a fresher perspective, where new thoughts will pop into our mind often providing more compassion and understanding.
It’s a system that is so simple and so subtle, but when the world is not as we are used to, understanding and seeing our system at play can be so transformative to how we experience the world around us often bringing the peace of mind that we crave and enabling us to be supportive of those who need it.
Andrea Morrison is a Transformational coach, speaker and writer, who challenges the traditional Alpha ideology, encouraging her clients to become courageous, acting from their heart not their head. She is passionate about freeing the human mind to achieve potential whilst retaining life balance and enjoyment.
To find out more about Andrea you can visit her website at andreamorrison.co.uk or watch her captivating TedX talk ‘When I stopped trying to be confident I became unstoppable!’